Kewaunee County and Limestone

A part of Brown County's park system, Fonferek Glen is just south of the City of DePere. Hiking the park provides one with insights to Wisconsin's Niagara Escarpment, a geological wonder that is part of a nearly 1,000 mile cliff from east central Wisconsin to Niagara Falls.

Not long ago every school kid knew what chalk was, however as smart boards and electronic media replace blackboards, chalk is the stuff for writing on the sidewalk, not a blackboard, or chalkboard. Chalk is limestone. Kids in science classes learn about sedimentary rock, and geography lessons include the chalk cliffs of England and other formations world-wide, including those in the regions of the Great Lakes and, specifically, Wisconsin’s most prominent geologic feature, the Niagara Escarpment.

Early settlers who knew little, if anything, about the Escarpment, found Wisconsin’s peninsula a limestone treasure. Eventually its quarries provided employment and income for both individuals with their own kilns and larger companies. Used as mortar in stone work, brick work and in plaster, the clamor for limestone increased with the early burgeoning Wisconsin population. Lime was and still is used to neutralize acidic soils. Before 1910 the Algoma Record carried articles and advertisements touting benefits gained in applying lime to soils used for wheat. Lime was vital in controlling outhouse odors and lime was good for manure too. A little slacked lime in compost or barnyard manure guaranteed decomposition of the matter over the winter, producing a first-rate fertilizer at very little expense.

Mortar, whitewash, cement and more can be found in ancient history. Colonists brought its uses to their new homes in America  where  limestone slabs were used in building walls or shaped to be used in such things as bridge abutments. Algoma City Council minutes and those from Kewaunee County Board indicate both groups were purchasing crushed stone for streets and roads by 1900. The county also bought lime for the Poor Farm. As time marched on, uses for lime mushroomed in ways the earlier peoples would have never dreamed. Its use in plastics, in sewer treatment operations, landscaping and much, much more came later, 

Nast, postmarked 1907

Kewaunee County's early days witnessed more lime kilns than are known today, as most were individually or family operated and only for a short time. Nast Bros. quarries and kilns at Footbridge was certainly the county’s largest and most well known. Nast’s business was on the site that is now Bruemmer County Park just outside Kewaunee. Though the kilns are long gone, the zoo area has more to view than just the animals, while walking the trails offers the mind’s eye what might have been.

Nast Bros. was formed in 1872, but in Marblehead, Wisconsin, not in Kewaunee County. Western Lime and Cement was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1886. In a merger announced in January 1921, Western purchased Nast Bros. and operated in Footbridge a short time before completely closing. Nast, the company that became so large, started on a very small scale, presumably with John Colbert in 1860 or ‘61. Seth Moore followed and his business is well-documented in the county's history, as is Nast’s. Not so well known is that William Bruemmer and Fred Besserdich also operated the stone quarry and lime kilns before the Nast Bros. took over. Western Lime and Cement became Western Lime and Stone and, following several mergers, it became one of Wisconsin’s largest lime firms. Footbridge had been operated as one of the company's subsidiaries. It is the smaller one-man and family operations that have faded into history. 

Advertising in the new Ahnapee Record in 1873, Charles Strutz and Fred Dammen promised to provide the residents of Ahnapee the highest quality fresh lime. In September that year the Record reported that A. Hall & Co. burned its first kiln in the company's new lime kilns on the South Branch (of the Ahnapee) about a mile up-river from its saw and grist mill. Nearly two years later, in mid-June 1875, Henry Gericke put up a lime kiln on the lake shore near Chris Braemer’s residence, today at approximately Arlington St. and Lakeview Dr. Joe Shestock announced his lime kiln near Kodan, about 3 ½ miles north of Ahnapee in the spring of 1883. It appears that August Schuette had purchased John Wheatley’s Montpelier land and was running a lime kiln there. Schuette sold in 1910 to August Borchardt who is believed to have been operating it into the 1930s. Matt Holub, Jr. put up a lime kiln at Gregor in early spring 1901. Henry Boulanger lived near Thiry Daems in Red River. Following his marriage to Clementine Delain in October 1901, he leased a neighboring farm where he operated a commercial lime kiln. Joe Musil’s kilns at Ryan were up and running by 1909 when he was purchasing wood from P.W. Cain. Before 1922 Joseph Bairel was advertising the white pulverized lime available at his Luxemburg lime works.

Lime kilns were dangerous places. In May 1883 E.T. Tillapaugh, the former owner of Cedardale Nursery about a mile west of Ahnapee, was nearly suffocated by the gasses from a kiln at Rockford, Illinois where he was working. After it appeared that the fumes rendered Tillapaugh lifeless, it took several physicians hours to restore him to consciousness, however Tillapaugh had no memory of the episode and couldn’t explain what happened. There were those who felt that since Tillapaugh’s son was “subject to fits”* when he was alive, it was possible such a thing caused Tillapaugh’s terrible accident.

Tillapaugh was lucky. A few years earlier, in 1892, the papers carried horrific articles about a man cremated in J. Mabe’s Menominee Falls lime kiln. Foreman Nick Marks was attending to business when he fell into a half-empty kiln. Workmen tried to save him but he was burned to death with the lime eating his remains. Marks had a wife and small child.

Intense heat used to burn the lime stone ensured that deadly carbonic acid gas was expelled by the burning lime. It wasn’t long after 1900 when papers carried articles about the fumes emitted from the burning, cautioning readers about allowing children and animals to lie down and sleep near a kiln. In May 1915, Nast employee Richard Shinnick was driving a wagon away from the kilns when a railroad car smashed into him as it was being switched from the main tracks to the lime kiln tracks. Though Shinnick fell between the wagon wheel and the train car, he miraculously escaped with his life. While the wagon box was crushed, had Shinnick not fallen as he did, he would have been crushed as well. Shinnick was awarded compensation from the company but it was called a private matter and does not appear to be recorded. Thomas Buffy was another who nearly lost his life in late 1916. Fog was dense – perhaps Buffy was too! He was on the tracks in the advance of the train coming from Casco Junction. The foreman repeatedly warned him to get off the tracks before co-workers finally pulled him off just in time. He reported an arm injury, no doubt from being yanked off the tracks. That arm injury probably saved his life.

Horace Jahnke, a Nast day laborer, brought suit against the company. Jahnke had been loading wood from a railroad car when he fell and was severely injured. Frank Rhadio had the same thing happen to him. Rhadio also brought suit. The cases were watched with interest as they were Kewaunee County’s first to be affected by the Compensation Act enacted on September 7, 1916.

Nast Bros. hired Italian laborers, and in November 1914 there was a rather humorous mix-up with about 15 Italians who had been employed to do sewer work in Kewaunee. As the story goes, the men were on the train and knew little of Kewaunee County. Their inability to speak English made things more difficult. When the train stopped at Clyde, the Italians felt they were in Kewaunee and tried to detrain. Somehow they were made to understand they had farther to go. The next time the train stopped, it was at Nast’s and seeing the line of houses – lime workers' homes – the men knew they were in Kewaunee and got off the train. After the train pulled out without them, they realized the error and had no option but going to Kewaunee on foot, eventually straggling into Kewaunee and finding it a far larger place than Footbridge!

Herman Nast, Sr. of Marblehead announced in November 1916 that he would be closing the lime works and would not be conducting his business there for some time. Western Lime and Cement bought the company a few years later, but as the quarry was being depleted and far less productive, it was not long before it closed for good. The site, however, still has much to offer. The county zoo, picnic area and trails add to the quality of life in Kewaunee County. Older generations remember when that quality included a stone beer garden, or bier garten, and the sounds of the county’s exceptional Bohemian and German polka bands playing in the bandstand on lazy summer Sunday afternoons.

Sources: Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record, Algoma Record Herald, An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, https://books.google.com/books, Rocks Products, Volume 24, 1/29/1924; J. Zeilter interview; postcard and photo from the blogger's collection, and painting courtesy NLJohnson Art.